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Posts tagged avoiding disaster
How’s Small Business Doing?
May 7th
Is small business growing?
The headlines are everywhere touting that small business owners are optimistic about growth. However, when you really read the small print, the outlook is anything but promising.
In April companies who answered one survey were almost equal in who added positions and who decreased positions, with 53% of businesses staying the same. That makes growth pretty much a wash for April.
The Wall Street Journals outlook was pretty much the same. In almost every area where they saw an increase, there was an offsetting decrease in a similar index.
One good sign was “The percent[age] of owners reporting positive sales More >
When You Need Help On A Project
May 4th
Putting an ad in the paper is the best way to get thousands of unqualified applications. There are better ways now.
When You Only Need Temporary HelpYou’ve got a project that needs to be completed, but you don’t want to hire someone full-time. Not only that you don’t want to just hire someone online, out of the blue, as you’ve had some bad experiences with not getting what you paid for and no real recourse.
Sideskills may just be the answer for you. It is an online project based hiring system where you can post job vacancy and receive a pre-screened list of More >
Even Good People Do Dumb Things
May 3rd
A good lawyer will convince the gavel to fall in your favor.
A Small Mistake, Turns BigSimply celebrating a little too much, and getting caught behind the wheel, can completely change your life or the life of one of your employees. It could means months of court appearances, loss of money, productivity, and even some time in jail, depending on the severity of the charge. Sometimes we think that the charge is something simple, and we’ll get out of it easily. However, unless you’re a lawyer you might want to think twice about trying to defend yourself.
Take California, for instance, a More >
How To Move Stock
Apr 30th
When starting out a Less than Truckload company may help you ship your stock.
You Have Lots Of StockWidgets here, widgets there, widgets-widgets everywhere! You’ve just started up your manufacturing company and have loads of stock. Now how do you get it where you want it to be, at a price you can afford? For many startup companies you need to be able to ship small amounts of product to a lot of different places, but you know you’ll grow and want to be able to ship more over time.
Do You Need TL or LTL?Truck Load (TL) delivery may not be More >
5 Things That Stop You From Succeeding
Mar 30th
It pays to check and see if you're making any of these blunders.
One epiphany I had just a short time ago is that I almost never completely complete something. There’s always a little something that doesn’t get done and that hangs over me forever. I always think, “I’ll get to that someday,” but someday never comes.
I’ve fallen into a very common trap, the trap of self-sabotage. There are many reasons for this, but there are five outstanding reasons we don’t complete our goals and reach the level of success we dreamed about in the beginning.
5 Major Sabotage Keys Too Many Goals:I More >
Techie Blunders to Avoid
Mar 27th
Technology is so much a part of our lives these days, that we sometimes don’t give it the attention it deserves. Especially the younger generation, they were weaned on a computer, grew up with Game Boy, and now their entire life is held in the palm of their hand.
Staying SecureIf you really want to keep your information secure, think twice about using one simple password for everything. Amazingly enough the most used password is “password1,” just adding a 1 to the default password. It may not be as easy to remember, but a mix of numbers and letters, some of More >
Learning To Pace Information Delivery
Mar 22nd
The Problem
I’m starting to realize that I have way more information than most people can assimilate in eight weeks. Just yesterday I was doing a segment on emotional health. We had our one-hour conference call. At the end of the call I had only covered about half the information! In order to have a complete toolbox, they really need all the information and more!
I’m beginning to think I’m going to have to break it into five programs, each one being about four weeks in length. It takes 21 days to instill a new habit, so it would have to be More >
Bankruptcy Misconceptions
Jan 19th
Do you feel the hammer hanging over the head of your business' financial security?
There are so many misconceptions about bankruptcy that I thought it might be helpful to highlight a few. There were massive changes to the bankruptcy law back in 2005. Some people even came out of it believing that if you hadn’t filed by 2005 you never could! That’s how mixed up everything got.
I’m just going to highlight a few of the more common misperception here.
First, your house, car, and boat are not exempt from paying off the loan if they are listed in your bankruptcy filing. You’ll More >
10 Ways To Win Customer Loyalty
Dec 12th
Customers fear there'll be nothing but a skeleton left by the time their questions are answered.
It’s the peak of the holiday season. Most retail businesses make upward of 75% of their profit from black Friday to the end of the year. If your business isn’t raking in the dough right now, it might be because customers are frustrated and having a hard time getting what they want, be it products or service. Here are ten ways you can make it smooth sailing for customers to easily get what they want.
- Really fix the top ten complaints by customers. If you aren’t More >
Putting The Public Back In Public Relations
Dec 2nd
A good ad agency will make your brand newsworthy.
One thing that I’ve found extremely frustrating is how so many companies, both big and small, seem to think that the consumer is no longer important. For a short time after the economic downturn I was greeted, at almost every store I visited, with a hearty hello, and thank you for your business. That was very short-lived. Now it’s back to being ignored at the checkout counter, being talked down to by management, and having your complaints filed in the circular file.
A company’s first impression is just as important as an individual’s. More >